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July 24th through 31st Archives

Monday, July 29th 2002 14:42 CDT

Apple Portables Team Seeking Feedback

Thanks to Accelerate Your Mac!, we noticed that Apple is sending the following message via email to the Apple developers:

"Portables Team Requests Feedback Apple's Portables development team would like to know how they're doing with the PowerBook and iBook. From your perspective as users and developers, please comment on current PowerBook and/or iBook product features and functionalities that are compelling to PC users looking to switch. Please categorize your comments as hardware, software, and Mac OS, and email to powerbookmarketing@apple.com before August 10, 2002.

Cheap 10.2

Amazon.com has the best price on Jaguar at $79.00 after rebates. You can preorder it here and the correct rebate coupon is here.

Stargazer's Delight Updated

We thought we'd share this press release with everyone--it sounds like a neat application:

Ruedi Schmid, the developer of Stargazer's Delight, the astronomical desktop planetarium for Macintosh, announces the release of the new version 6.1 for Mac OS 8/9 and OS X.

A free evaluation copy of Stargazer's Delight 6.0 can be downloaded from <http://www.stargazersoft.com/stargazer.html>.

Stargazer's Delight, a fully featured desktop planetarium and sky simulator, is a comprehensive and entertaining guide to the heavens for first time stargazers as well as ambitious hobby astronomers.

It offers views of the sky for any date and for any location on Earth. You can see all the stars up to magnitude 10 (over 260,000 stars), the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the brightest asteroids and hundreds of deep-sky objects such as galaxies, clusters and nebulas.

Friday, July 26th 2002 18:02 CDT

PBZone Mailbag

Our first letter/question comes from reader John:

With all of the new CPU upgrades popping up from Sonnet, Powerlogix, etc. I am anxious to learn if there will be an upgrade for the original G4 400 Tibook? I'm optimistic that NewerTech will be coming out with one; my email inquiry to them 2 months ago still goes unanswered.

Any advance info regarding any G4 Tibook upgrades would be greatly appreciated. Can't afford to buy a new system till next year - an upgrade card would be very welcomed as I get more & more into higher end audio/video programs & editing. Thanks!

Reader Matthew explains his problem with a "ticking" hard drive:

I was just searching around for some info on the ticking noise coming from my Ti G4 Powerbook 30gb HD. I just got mine about a month ago, and noticed the ticking about 2 weeks ago. I found an Apple knowledgebase article about the ticking. They said it was from the hd heads parking when inactive, or something. Well, either way, when its quiet and my Powerbook is on, that ticking is just plain ANNOYING!!! I contacted Apple and the tech and I went through some things to no avail, so they sent me a box this morning to ship it back to them. They said that there is a noise level (I think the website said it was like 29 or 39 dba) that it would have to breech. Well, I'm guessing that will be their way out of the situation, by saying it isn't loud enough. But, hopefully they replace the drive so that ticking stops, but if not, I guess Apple will get to know me better.

We get this question a lot:

I was wondering if you could send me the template application for the bookcovers. I recently just bought a used 1400 and thought it would be fun to give it a different look.

Thursday, July 25th 2002 14:04 CDT

Entourage Comments

We got a few more emails following the news that MS pulled the Entourage conduit for Palm:

A reading of microsoft's newsgroup on entourageX will reveal that many people, myself included, had a number of problems with the conduit, while others responded (in my "fightin' words" paraphrase) "Well, it works on MY machine, so what's your problem?"

Issues include:

- bloating of address book database space

- hotsync fails/crashes during sync of address book, calendar, etc.

In my own case, I've been able to sync the address book with Entourage, but I'm still using the Palm Desktop program to sync calendar appts, to do list, and notes. That's a functional workaround while waiting for either the conduit or Jaguar, whichever comes first.

---

I grabbed the Entourage conduit as soon as it was posted. Installed it on my G3 PowerBook (Pismo) and Sync'd. It worked without a hitch. There were some events in dates that were duplicated but that was OK. The problem was with my Palm 515. The 500K that the Datebook used to occupy now had ballooned to 8756K! That's over 8 megs of internal memory shot. Good thing I had a 28 meg MMC laying around to use. I'm just glad I caught the "feature" before other people in my office used it with their Palms. Now I hoping somebody figures out how to undo the damage Microsoft has done. I'm going to wait and use X 10.2 and iSync and try to wean myself from Microsoft all together with the exception of Word.

Another Wallstreet Upgrade Report

Reader Ed sent in his experience:

About 1.5 years ago, I upgraded my 250 mHz Wallstreet with the BlueChip 500 G3 processor from PowerLogix. The upgrade went smooth and has remained so all along. At the same time, I upgraded to a 30G HD. Other than having to partition for OS X (8G for OS X and the rest for OS 9) that has also remained well. About 3 months ago, I did have to get some logic board replaced (wouldn't power on). I don't think it was related to the upgrade. I put the old CPU and HD in, the problem still was present. Left them in and got the machine repaired under warranty then I put the upgrades back in and everything is back to high speed.

However, I don't think I will upgrade to the G4 CPU. I've added PCMCIA USB and Firewire cards, but they aren't 100% compatible. For example, the firewire won't work with my iPod. My USB port only works under OS X. I'm planning on a new PB next year sometime. But if I hadn't done the 500 G3, I certainly would consider the 500 G4.